All right, we are going to start in three, two, and one. All right, ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another episode of coffee with the freight Coach. My name is Chris Jolly. I am your host and I am the freight coach. Before we jump into the episode, as always, thank you guys so much for coming out and listening to this podcast. If this is your first time tuning in, welcome. This is the real side of freight, ladies and gentlemen, and I say that before every single show. And what I mean by that is I only speak to transportation professionals because at the end of the day, I want to talk to the right individuals who have done what you're looking to do or who are currently doing what you're trying to achieve.
So you can take that information, apply it, utilize it, and see a meaningful difference in your business and your life. I do have one small favor to ask before we get into things. If you get value, I know you will. But if you get value and you're not subscribed, subscribe to the show. You guys share it out there. Dear network, because if you see value, your network's going to see value as well. All right, I got a very special guest for you guys here today.
We're going to talk about compliance, going to talk about the clearinghouse, we're going to talk about safety, all of that stuff out there, because this is one of those things inside of your business that I think as you grow in scale, you don't think that you need it until you do, and then it might be too late in those instances. So we're going to talk about kind of building that stuff out in your system. So I have Mister Mike Presse on the show. He is the president and chief strategy officer of Best Pass Fleetworthy. So, Mike, thank you so much for joining me.
Thanks for having me.
Now, I'm looking forward to this. It's not often that I get to talk to somebody who is as diehard of a badger fan as I am. And, you know, us Wisconsin guys got to stay together. Mike.
Absolutely. Absolutely.
It's, you know, it's, I think that, you know, getting into things inside of the, you know, especially with SaaS and kind of bringing all of this up to speed and the digitization of everything is that it's so vital, I think, for businesses out there. But, you know, kind of before we kind of tackle that stuff, Mike, how did you get your start in the industry and kind of what brought you into this?
Yeah, so my story in transportation started in 2016. I was making a industry change and really found myself really interested in transportation as a whole. You know, I kind of feel like I have an entrepreneurial spirit. And when you look at trucking and you look at even the biggest trucking companies in the world, a lot of them started with one person that had one truck and wanted to drive value individually, and then from there just grew. So I just felt like it's one of the last industries that anyone can if they're interested in impacting society and building a business. I still think transportation is like a great industry for people to cut their teeth in entrepreneurship and driving value for, you know, the greater environment.
So that's what intrigued me, and that's why I started with at the time, its compliance, and we changed our name to Fleetworthy about two years into it. And it's been a great journey.
Yeah, it's, you know, I've been, I've had the fortunate being of being in transportation my entire life. I could come from a family of truck drivers. And, you know, I always love learning about, like, the asset side of things because I never op, actually worked in the trucking side of things. I've always been on the brokerage side. And I, you know, there are so many things that a truck needs to do before they even put it in gear to drive. And I think that, you know, a lot of the conversations that I love having about the assets is, you know, I think about my old man a lot and the fact that he couldn't shut his business down for a week to go to a conference to learn about this stuff. And, you know, I talk about it often.
Mike, there's no playbook to entrepreneurship and more, most more times than nothing, you learn about something when it's too late, when you're getting ticketed or a fine or, you know, because you didn't. So it's like, when it comes to safety and compliance, I feel like that's almost step one. After you sign, you know, get your dot and your mc number and everything, you buy your truck before you think of anything else. Safety and compliance is what you got to do because you, that is the only way you can operate your business. If you own a truck, you hit.
It right on the head. And the interesting thing is you can spend time on the Internet, and you can find so much information about how to start an authority and how to get a truck and how to start moving goods and things. But to your point, there's not a real clear playbook. Like, how do you do it in a safe way and how do you maintain safety as you grow and gain traction in the business. And that's one of the reasons I was kind of intrigued by this business was helping not only large carriers, but small carriers scale to meet their goals and needs. And when you're in an industry that's highly regulated by the government, who's constantly changing things, to your point, that person who starts with one truck and expands to 15 trucks, it gets harder and harder to maintain compliance.
So to your point, we believe in start, you know, start with a foundation of, you know, our logo or our slogan is, you know, beyond compliant, which means you got to do more than just the minimum because if you don't, you're just one accident away from being shut down or one bad thing happening that, you know, changes the direction of the business. And at Fleetworthy, we try to partner with our customers and make sure that we build a mode around them from a safety perspective so they can achieve the goals that they've set.
I look at it and people can laugh when they hear this, but I think of my business. I think of myself as I'm the CEO of a multibillion dollar corporation right now. We're not. But I approach every day like that. I approach it in what I talk about on my podcast. I approach it about how I comment on things on social media when I, is this what a billion dollar CEO would even entertain in those moments? Like going back? Because I've been self employed now for four years. And one thing that we do is we do quarterly financial reviews, we do monthly meetings to make sure, and we do weekly targets to make sure, hey, are we on track? Are we hitting these things?
And I think going back into a solo operator, the second you buy your business, even if you don't have a staff, you don't have any of that stuff you need. If you have any aspirations to build a business and, you know, and take it from one to 15 to 50 trucks, day one, you need to treat it as you are going to go there because if you don't implement these things right away, it is so much harder to change direction when you have five employees, ten employees, 15 employees, as opposed to this is the standard day one because when you set that early on and you can build off of that, you're going to be so much further ahead than if you hire three or four drivers. And all of a sudden you're like, wait, why do we have to have any safety meetings?
Why do we need to be compliant on anything? Like, weren't like that before. Where have that standard set on day one. That's just the expectation.
100%, 100% agree. And, you know, the thing about transportation is, to your point, the moment you get your authority and you start driving the highways and byways, you're creating breadcrumbs of how important is safety for you as a business? And the more time you spend not taking it serious, the bigger the risk is when something bad happens, because then they start looking backwards and saying, hey, your behavior looks like you don't care about the safety of others, safety of your drivers safety. We try to drive that home. That safety has to be in the forefront, and it has to scale.
Yeah, it's a mike, I actually think I just read an article the other day that a trucking company went under because they had an accident and they had no safety plan. They had nothing, and the dot shut them down. They revoked everything like that. So it's like thinking about that as an entrepreneur, because it's hard enough to make it in business, right? Like, there are so many hurdles you got to get through. And then you get to that point, like, and especially I look at it like this, if you get sued, like, lawyers hope you had a bad day and forgot, you know, insurance companies hope you didn't do it so they don't have to pay out in certain situations, you got to protect yourself. Right? Like, this is a business.
This isn't a hobby or anything like that, and you need to treat it as such. And I think, like, there's a lot of things that get sent out there in the media and everything else that it makes it, like, it's not the owner's response. Like, fault that they didn't know. I'm like, on the contrary, it is. It is 100% your fault if you sign into an agreement with a company that isn't in your favor and it turns out that it's a shady business dealing. You're the owner. You should have consulted with somebody.
Absolutely.
So let's talk about this a little bit, you know, because it's like, when we're going out there and we're building out a compliance, what are something that you guys do with the people that you work with, your guys as clients right now? How do you guys build out a compliance? Is it a department? Is it a system? Is there kind of like a starter thing? And then you kind of build up with that through there?
Yeah. So if you look at, you know, we've been in business for over 40 years, and really, in the beginning, we started cutting our teeth with helping, you know, small owner operators who were, you know, when trucking was deregulated and competition was getting easier. We wanted to figure out ways to help these small trucking, whether it's one individual with one truck or multiple trucks. How do we help you operate just like the big four hire fleets? And then we had to get them to understand, if you look at the truck and the technology that's been advancing in the trucks themselves, and you compare it to the back office of some of these first smaller carriers, but now even larger carriers, there is this uneven situation where a lot of technology in the truck, a lot of data coming out of the truck.
Government was starting to consume that data to kind of analyze whether you're driving and running a safe business or not, but back office solutions that just couldn't keep up. Right? So our concept was, let's build technology and services that we can apply to carriers of all sizes so that they can keep up with the trends, right? So that their back office can consume that data and they can make decisions to make sure that they can show that, hey, we're following the regulations. We care about safety. And that's kind of where our mission started.
And then as technology advanced, we started saying, hey, if we can take that technology and put it in front of our services, and our technology becomes this place that we meet all of our customers to drive compliance, safety processes that show that they have a vigor around running their operations in a safe way, we thought that would drive a lot of value in the industry. And 40 plus years later, I think we're seeing that every day that our customers appreciate it and lean on us to help them drive a safe carrier and authority.
So do you guys have an API integration in with an eld provider and then the carrier's TMS system, where you guys can take the driver's performance, compile that data, and tell the story behind it? Yeah, the aggressive braking, the, you know, the speeding up, the slowing down, and everything else to talk about fuel consumption and all of that.
So we look at, so we focus on, you know, the safety aspect of running that authority, and we understand there's all sorts of, you know, data that kind of are indicators of problems that you may have or problems that are coming up. So we focus on kind of three things. Safety of your drivers. So the, you know, driver qualification management, making sure that the driver's credentials are up to date, making sure that they're following clearinghouse rules and all those things, putting it into one single pane of glass so that you can start analyzing you know, what are we doing really well as a company? What are we struggling with? But then giving our customers actual data so that they can proactively fix problems. Right. Simple things. I call it the science of it.
Hey, making sure that your driver's CDL hasn't expired, making sure that they have an updated med card. Hey, having the muscle memory and discipline of monitoring mbrs to make sure that, you know, if something changes in a driver's history or behavior, that you get in front of that and take them off the road if they need to. So, you know, moving from a reactive kind of culture to a proactive one. And we do that not only on the driver side, but we do it on the asset. You mentioned your interest of understanding the asset aspect of the business. We partner with carriers so that when that asset is born, when it's manufactured, what are the things that you need to do to make sure it's registered, permitted, ready to be driven on the road legally?
So we help our customers with that as well then. The third big one is fuel tax. A lot of people who are not in the industry don't realize that there's a lot of rules around which highway do you use and where are you buying gas and paying the taxes correctly. And that might sound like a small thing, but that's a big financial commitment that the carrier needs to make. And keeping track of who do I owe taxes to? Which states have I been driving in? That becomes a really hard equation to fix. We help carriers with that as well.
Yeah, and I think, like, you're bringing up so many points that are. It seems fairly simple at the end of the day, right, where it's just like, you know, I just got a notification from the state of Arizona that I got to renew my tabs, you know, stuff like that. Like, it's almost like you're optimizing their back office to make sure that everybody is up to date. They're, they're in compliant with all the laws and they can keep running, right. Because it's like, at the end of the day, like my dad always used to say this, our wheels ain't turning, we ain't earning. And you don't want to shut your truck down, you know? Cause you already have enough issues with mechanical issues and maintenance and everything else. Like, because you forgot, right?
Like you got to renew your CDL or update your med card or file your IFTA. IFTA is a. That's another thing that, you know, to be fully transparent. Up until a couple of years ago, I didn't even know was a thing.
Right. Most people don't.
Yeah. And then they get into the weed, you know, to the thick of things. And it's like, I think with technology where it's like, I'm a fan of technology, but to a point, right. Because I don't want, I'm not like the, hey, let's automate everything. So we're all out of jobs essentially. But I feel like utilizing technology with what you're offering here, Mike, from my perspective is you don't have an excuse now, right? Like you don't have a, I forgot, it's, there are software that is at your disposal that you can implement today to where you can stay on top of all of this stuff. Then you don't have to worry about it. Right. Like, I think when you're going out there and building your business up, like, what can you automate so you can focus on revenue producing activities?
Because I feel like a lot of fleets. At the end of the day, you want to be, you don't want to be relying on brokers. You don't want to be reliant on everything. You want to find your own customers. Well, now your time as the founder or the leader of a company isn't spent going through piles and piles of paperwork to make sure your drivers are compliant. It's automate that then you can focus.
On revenue producing activities, hit it right on the head. And we kind of take a three legged stool approach with our customers. And I love technology. Anyone who knows me knows that I embrace technology. I want to be on the front edge of adopting technology. But we also understand that there's a human aspect of it and there's a people aspect of it. So if you look at our company, yes, we feel like we have the best technology in the industry. But wrapped around that, as we have a large client services team that becomes an extension of our customer safety department.
And if that's a one owner operator who he or she is the driving the truck and they're the safety department, they can rest and lean on our client services team to understand the regs, keeping a watchful eye on what's going on in the regulatory environment and making sure that, you know, you're good from a compliance perspective. And, you know, we have to remember when you look at the asset side and, you know, dmvs, most people don't enjoy going to a DMV, you know, but the last block of dependency is to keep your trucks on the road, you know, we're depending on working with a DMV to get registrations renewed, to get tabs on trucks, all those things, just like, you know, every other person has to do to keep their car on the road.
So, you know, the example I use to friends when they're trying to explore to understand why are we important. You know, I say, well, you have kids. Imagine if you had five children going to five different schools in five different states and you were nice enough to get them each a car, but the car is in your name and now you have to be responsible for making sure the vehicle is registered, making sure they are going through tolls, they're not blowing through tolls, illegally managing toll violations or things that occur. When that happens gets to be a very overwhelming thing. And then I say, okay, imagine being in the trucking industry and having 5000 trucks, 5000 drivers with your name on the cab and it's still your responsibility.
Imagine how hard it is to manage all the moving parts to keep, you know, to make sure that the drivers are compliant, your assets are compliant. The way you're running and working through tolls is compliant. It becomes a very herculean task, even for large organizations.
Yeah, no, I know it is. It's, it's, you know, I think that there's so many different layers that you're uncovering with what you're talking about there, Mike. And you know, it is like you just don't have an excuse, right? Like the dot does not care. Right? Like if they find that you are out, they're going to, you know, going to put you out of service. And I think that the larger the organization, the more and more that I think some of these things tend to slip between the cracks. So it's like get ahead of it early and get ahead of it often. And, you know, do quarterly compliance reviews. Right.
Like hire outside people to come in and look at your stuff and you know, like with that being said though, like what's something that you guys have seen where it's like if people are going to be listening to this and they're going to be like, hey, I need to get my stuff in order. Where should they start? Right? Like what is something that they should start to organize before they would come in and sit down with you guys?
Yeah. So I, the, and this is really relevant to any size of a carrier. But, but the question that I always ask is, you know, to the individual that's responsible for the overall safety profile of a carrier, I say think of the worst thing that could happen in your business, which most people would say an accident that results in a fatality. And the moment that happens, do you have one place to go to understand, have we been doing all the right things? Did we make any mistakes? Where do you go to get that answer? And before people work with Fleetworthy, I get a lot of answers, like, we really don't have a place to go. I don't really know where to go. I'm going out to governmental sites like safer and kind of seeing what our scores look like. I'm checking emails.
I'm going to all these different systems. So our goal was, well, if we can create this single pane of glass where you can go there and very quickly down to the driver, understand with a couple of clicks that, hey, that driver has been running safe. You know, his. His driver's license is. Is up to date, his medcards up to date. He's. He's done all of the road testing. You know, it gives you peace of mind that an accident still happened. It's not the same as negligence. Right? So that's where we start.
And most people are saying, if you could give us that place, that destination, that really gives me a snapshot in real time on how we're doing from a compliance perspective, that takes me a long way to really focus on the exceptions because I know where to go and they stand out to us versus not having a place to go and not really understanding how to keep our arms around it. And that's the conversation we start with pretty much all of our customers, whether they're small or large, they all have that same problem. Like, we don't know where to go. And so it's hard to be proactive when we don't even know where to start. So that's our goal. And CP suite is our platform.
Our goal is to, hey, we want you to be able to focus on the exceptions and the problems because we're giving you notifications and telling you've got issues here. This needs to be fixed. Versus every day you start from scratch, not understanding, you know, what's my risk profile? Right? So you hit on digitization as well. So imagine people that were doing everything, paper base and cabinets, you know, manual driver qualification files that are not dynamic. You know, you get to the point where you say. You throw your hands up and say, I can't manage this. And imagine moving that into a proactive, dashboard enabled solution that's telling you what you should be, you know, focusing on and what needs your attention takes them a long ways.
I feel like in today's day and age, trucking companies are. They don't get the benefit of the doubt. They're guilty until they prove themselves innocent. They truly are, I think, with where nuclear verdicts are. Right. I mean, it's just laughable at this point, like, what some of these verdicts are coming out at. And, you know, I think that, again, it's like, you don't have want you, like, the optics of an accident are bad enough, right? And because it's your logo all over the road. And then again, these insurance companies, these lawyers, they're. They're hoping you don't have this stuff in order, right. And you have to fight tooth and nail to prove that, no, were compliant. We did do this. I mean, there's a couple of massive cases that were out there.
I mean, the one that comes to mind to me all the time is Warner and how they had a driver who was on the opposite side of the freeway, and the car crossed over and hit the Warner truck head on, and Warner got sued for 100 million. Right? So it's like that. If Warner's not immune to it, what do you think that they're going to do? You know? So it's like, those are those things that I think about a lot, and it is. It. Carriers are guilty until they're proven innocent. And knowing that and seeing that like that, to me, is like, why wouldn't you do this, right, when you know that every time a driver gets pulled into a scale, I've been in the cab with a truck with my dad.
When he got pulled into a scale, he had all of his stuff, right? This was back in the nineties, so it was pretty. He had everything right there. He had his little manila folder with his logbook, his registration, his everything was right there that he had to hand over to the. The, the scale. The scale, officer. And I feel like in today's day and age, like, having that, like, think about how much more of, like, from an optic standpoint. Again, I'm not an attorney. This isn't legal advice. But from an optic standpoint, if you're like, here, download this driver's file. Download this driver's records. Here it all is right here. Boom. It's going to be a lot more to work with than. Hold on. I got to go into this filing cabinet. Wait, did we even get that document from this driver?
Where is that stuff at? I feel like, from a sense of ease standpoint, like, here it is. Take with it, go do with what you need.
Yeah, you hit on a lot of things. One, you backed into why we rebranded the company Fleetworthy. People ask, where did that come from? And it's examples that you just mentioned. We believe after talking to all of our customers, the biggest advertising billboard that trucking companies have is the trailers on their trucks with their logos. Right. So when we talk about when we came up with Fleet worthy as a brand, our goal is to partner with our customers to make sure that every driver and every asset that's on the road that has that company's logo is worthy of having that company's logo on their cab or on their lapel from a compliance perspective.
So that's what we're, we agree with you that's, you know, because whether it's attorneys, you know, they're looking at you're, you're the big bag company that, you know, caused an accident and they see your name, whether it's, you know, well known names or, you know, small trucking companies, there's this uneven perception of, you know, who's to blame. Right, from jump. So all the things that we do from our technology to our service team is to make sure that we fortify that for our customers so that they understand if they click on anything, they're going to be able to say, yeah, this company is really serious about compliance. Look at it. All the proof is here in their policies, in their documentation. And then we want to empower them electronically so that it's always available for, to them 24 hours a day, 365. Right.
So that's our mission, both from the products that we build from a technology perspective and the services we deliver with all the people on our team, you.
Know, kind of staying up on this topic but transitioning a little bit. So the FMCSA had their clearinghouse, and you brought that up earlier as well. And, you know, that was established. I think it was like four or five years ago now at this point. And that's been a major kind of sticking point for a lot of trucking companies out there and especially with, you know, we don't have touch on the marijuana laws, but, like, that's current legislation that's on Capitol Hill right now. Is, is that an impairment with it being legal in some of these states out there? And what are those effects on it? But, like, how have you guys kind of worked with your, your customers on the clearinghouse and making sure all of that stuff is up to date?
Yeah. So you heard mention before that the trucking companies are at a disadvantage because there's so much data that's coming and they don't know how to. So when we saw a clearinghouse coming to fruition, were like, here's yet another step that the carrier has to take in an already very complicated and competitive situation in regards to hiring drivers. It's already hard to keep up with all the regulations and things. Now they've just layered on another thing that they have to do. Right. I think the intent of making the road safer is absolutely a great goal, but when you look at it from the carrier's perspective, this is like, okay, now, this is another thing that we need to do and remember to do, and the drivers have to take action when it comes to registering.
And so we just said, okay, this is another chance for us to partner with transportation companies and say, hey, we can be your agent and we can make sure that clearinghouse, as a step in your hiring process is taken care of. We can make sure that the queries are done timely and all the different things that you need to do to comply to the mandate. We give them technology and people to help meet those requirements.
So what is the responsibility of a driver or a trucking company for the clearinghouse? It, I feel like coming into it. It, you know, it sounds pretty intense, right? Like, what does this actually do? Is it where. Because I think it was like some of the larger fleets out there, and correct me if I'm wrong, were like, they were trying to do hair follicle testing, and then, you know, they wanted to go. It was blood analysis and then urine analysis as well. Was it? Is that what the clearinghouse kind of does, is it's like a. A digital footprint of every violation. And is it different levels to the testing? Like, on scene? It's. It's hair. What does that look like?
Yeah. So there's a lot of different thoughts on what's the best way to test, you know, for impairment or drug use or. Clearinghouse really is more of a, hey, when there's a problem, we need to make sure it's identified, documented, and in a place that anyone can get to so that you can make sure that you're not putting a driver on the road that has, you know, any incidents that, you know, has diminished their ability to drive from a licensing perspective. So, you know, it was like, hey, let's build a database that everyone has access to. So that, to your point, there is no excuse. Now that there's clearinghouse, if someone, you know, had a DWI or was, you know, had an issue, an incident. There is no excuse not to find that now. Right.
The problem is, you know, when you're in a competitive environment of trying to hire qualified drivers, this is another thing that you have to do. So I think the thought was, let's even the playing field. Everyone has to do it. Let's get this data out there. And in the beginning, I think there was an underestimation on how big and efficient the infrastructure had to be. So in the beginning of it, the site was crashing. I think they fixed it. I think we're now to the point where it works. But to your point, marijuana laws, things like that, kind of changes, you know, what should be considered illegal, what should be considered an incident that should make them be in a. Be put in a prohibited status so that they can't drive.
So the concept is pretty straightforward, but the, you know, the knit details is complicated. Right?
Yeah, I think that, you know, because it is. I think the feds are. They're looking to downgrade it from a scheduled marijuana from a schedule one to a schedule three drug. And, you know, how does I. My personal opinion is very much the like of the sense of, like, there should be no impairment at all. Like, no dry. Like, I don't care. I understand that there are certain things. If you need to utilize marijuana on a medical standpoint, you should not be operating machinery. All right? You can hate that answer. I don't care. I know that it's not a psychotic or anything, like, where you're like. But at the end of the day, you're operating an 80,000 pound machine. And I think that some people who are for marijuana use, for. For drivers out there.
What if it's your family that gets hit and killed by a driver who is high? Right. I don't care what your personal opinions are on. On marijuana. You can be for it. You can be. I'm very impartial to it. Right. I truly don't care. At the end of the day, until it comes down to driving and operating heavy machinery, I do not think that there is any place on the road for that at all.
So I use an example when I'm. Because I agree with you. But the thing that I talk, you know, everyone's focusing on marijuana. Should it be legal? Whatever. I always go back to when the government mandated Elds and, you know, you talked about your father and the hours of service, and you remember when he used to do the hours of service, log books and whatever, you know, the reality is hours of services is to try to make sure that you stop a driver from driving when he's fatigued, he or she's fatigued. Right. And the last time I checked, being tired is not illegal. Right? It's not. It's not illegal to be tired.
But, you know, the reason we put the hours of service rules in place was so that people weren't driving longer than they should be, falling asleep at the wheel and causing accidents. Right. So to me, it's not a legal thing. It's a. Whether a drug is legal or illegal, it's an impairment thing, to your point. Right. So what we've decided is our goal, if our goal is to be a shepherd of driving safety in our roads, the more and more we can be real time attached to a driver, making sure that driver isn't impaired for whatever reason, I think that's, you know, a good thing to try to accomplish. So we're. We're trying with technology to be, as, we'll never be in the cab, we're not a device company or. But, hey, if.
If someday in the future, we can monitor a carrier's drivers and say, hey, that driver has an impairment of some kind, we're not sure why, but they shouldn't be driving. And we can real time get that driver off the road to rest or to mitigate whatever the issue is. I think that's a great mission, irregardless of the reason of the impairment. So, you know, I think clearinghouse, great. What they're trying to accomplish, I think, is. Is great. Hey, we want to make the road safer, but I think, you know, it gets murky when we start talking about, well, marijuana should be legal, or it's, you know, I don't. To your point, it's like, what you decide to do on your own time, that's on you.
But if you're in a truck and you're impaired and you cause an accident that causes fatalities, I don't care what the reason was. We've got to get in front of that, make the road safer.
And I've seen the arguments out, some of the drivers who are like, oh, but I can get out of the cab in my truck and go drink a couple of beers and stuff like that. I would say it's almost like, with the advancements in technology, it's just weight there. It's some point there will be a way to test, like, what is an acceptable level of usage and everything. I just think it's only a matter of time. I just think that you know, if you're going to, you know, again, do what you want to do on your own time. All right. Like, I truly feel that way. But I also look at it from the perspective of, if you're getting behind the vehicle, and you're drinking and driving and, you know, again, it's only a matter of time. Right.
And as a broker, you know, as somebody out there who is contracting trucking companies to haul my customers freight all the time, I can handle. If a, if a driver comes to me and says, hey, man, I'm exhausted. I got to shut down, am I going to like that? No, but no. No truckload is worth a human life, in my opinion. It's not at all. And I feel like if you're a driver and you're at a company that's forcing you to do stuff that is beyond your comfort level. And again, this is kind off topic, but I think it's kind of relevant to. It is you shouldn't be working there, right? Like, if a company, if your company doesn't have compliance standards and you're going there, you shouldn't be operating their equipment. You shouldn't even be on there, because guess what?
You will be pulled into those lawsuits, too. It's only a matter of time. Like, I think people tend to forget that when they are operating, if it's their decisions, you will be held accountable at some point in time.
Absolutely. And you hit on another, you know, people ask, you know, why are companies that you work with a better place for the driver to work? And it's those things. It's like, we feel like this isn't just about the safety of other drivers. It's the safety of the commercial driver themselves. And if you're working for a carrier that has some rigor around safety, ultimately it's going to mean a better work experience for the driver. So that's the reason we do, we wake up every morning and do this things that we do, right?
No, I'm right there with you because I think, you know, you brought up a, you know, improving the work experience for drivers. You know, like, how is a lot of this stuff going to affect recruiting of drivers into this industry? Right. I think, like, that's a, I don't, you know, to be fully transparent, I don't subscribe to the fact that there's a driver shortage at all. I don't think that there's anywhere near a driver shortage. But I think, like, I, it's our duty as transportation professionals to prop up why this is such a great industry to get into for that next generation of driver that's coming out there.
And you know, I'm personally a fan of the what you might call it a program out there about getting kids that are 18 years old or in high school behind the wheel because again, a lot of people tend to fail. Like I personally don't think it's that big of a deal to crosse state lines or, you know, maybe have a 150 or 200 miles radius around your home base of where they can drive and stuff like that. Because I think, like how many times, you know, like the apprenticeship program, excuse me, how many people out there, again, like I'm from a town of 1800, there's not a lot of opportunities to make six figures where I'm from. They're really.
And driving a truck is one of those opportunities and getting into the trade so it's like, I think, you know, leveraging what technology is at our disposal now and getting it out there and marketing that stuff to the next generation of driver because the driver age is aging. The, the first time driver is, I think like the average age of that I think is like it's creeping up into there, man, where it's like into the high thirties now where people are coming into this, it's like a second or a third career and it's like why don't we leverage the technology that's out there right now to attract that next generation to get them right away and to get them and to help improve this industry?
Completely agree. And you hit on, you know, I love your story about being in the cab with your dad and getting, you know, going to a waste station and paper and all those things and, you know, you can imagine, you know, the younger generation looks at that and says, you know, why are we still doing this stuff like this? Right? So that is why, you know, our footprint in regards to our mobile apps and things, you know, trying to create an experience that younger people getting into the business can embrace and see that, hey, you know, I'm in an industry that's keeping up with the changes in technology. My carrier, the company I work for is embracing it, making my life easier.
All things that we're trying to do, you know, on this mission of keeping our roads safe but attracting the right people that are interested in. Again, I think an industry that's core and important to the US so completely aligned with you on that now.
It's definitely the most important industry. I truly feel nobody's ever going to convince me of this any differently, Mike that trucking is the most important industry to the United States of America and really any economy out there across the globe.
Mike. Well, yeah, not to go off topic, but I think Covid, when Covid hit, I think that was the time that the light was being shined on transportation as an industry and the heroes that were behind the wheels getting goods to stores and dealing with this worldwide pandemic and being away from their families weeks at a time, keeping the supply chain up and running. And to your point, the transportation industry was key to all that. And as we all had the chance to be in our homes and watching, that's what jumped out at me. It's like now you're starting to understand why over the road truckers is so important to the US economy and your day to day life.
So that was the one bright spot of COVID I think it made the younger generation recognize that, you know what, transportation is a key industry. And maybe I should look at that. Both of my, you know, my two sons started in brokering and trucking, and, you know, it was interesting to see them learn how vital it was. So that's why I'm happy to be in this industry.
I love it. Mike, I appreciate you joining me, man. Thank you so much for taking the time and talking about what you guys got going on. How does anybody to reach out to you guys to find out more that they're hearing this, they're like, I got to get my compliance in order here. How do they find out more best.
You know, I would invite them to go scour our website@fleetworthy.com. A lot of information there, not only about us, but, you know, as I mentioned earlier, we required by Bestpass, the best toll management program in the United States. A lot of good information to mine there. And if you find yourself needing help, reach into us. We'd be glad to help you.
Perfect. And for some reason, if you guys can't find Mike or Fleetworthy or anything like that, just hit me up as I was always gladly put you guys in direct contact with them. And if you guys made it this far in the episode, which I know you did, and you're not subscribed, subscribe to the show. You guys share it out there. Dear network, because if you see value, your network's going to see value as well. I appreciate you guys. I love you guys. And we'll be talking to you soon. Bye.